


I'll Never Leave, I'll Never Stray (my love for you will never change)

by DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee



Series: True Love or Something [27]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-28 16:27:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10137290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee/pseuds/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee
Summary: “Peaches.”“I’m not doing this with you.”“Gumdrop.”“Lance.”“Pookie.”“Lance, no.”“Tangerine.”Keith blinks and stares at him.  “What?”Lance shrugs, “If ‘peaches’ is a term of endearment then why not ‘tangerine’?”Five times Lance used a pet name for Keith and one time Keith had a nickname for Lance.





	

**Author's Note:**

> THANK YOU ALL
> 
> You all continue to be wonderful.
> 
> HEADS UP, I HAVE A TUMBLR NOW. I just got it today, (I finally bowed to peer pressure - I am weak) it's brand new and pretty and I have very little idea how to use it properly. So if you wanna chat with me, check out my tumblr! Hit me up if you've got questions, prompts (no promises), want to tag me in something, or just want to know my random stream-of-conscious thoughts. I'm still deerstalkerdeathfrisbee there so I should be easy to find. 
> 
> Also, I've gotten a few questions about art - I love fanart and if anyone feels inspired by this series, you have my blanket permission to create art for it, BUT, you have to tell me about it and give me a link so I can look at it and admire how pretty it is and get really excited.

**I’ll Never Leave, I’ll Never Stray (my love for you will never change)**

**Darling**

“I just want to know at what point you thought it was a good idea to throw a ball of chocolate mousse at the guy.”

            “Around the time you were glaring daggers at his prissy trophy wife.”

            “Okay, well as long as we’re on the same general page.” Keith exhales tiredly and rolls his head over to look at Lance, “Lance. What are we doing here?”

            “Are you asking philosophically, literally, or in a where-is-our-relationship-going sort of way? Because I’d like to take a moment to point out that we’re married and that’s basically the endgame, babe.”

            “More of a ‘how did we get to this point and what’s your plan for getting us out of here?’”

            “Oh. Well, the former football quarterback was being a dick, his wife was worse, and I threw a mushy dessert at his face before you could slap his bitchy wife.”

            Keith narrows his eyes, “Does that count as you defending my honor or my defending yours?”

            “Definitely me defending yours.”

            Keith looks, if anything, more suspicious, “You just want to win.”

            “You can’t _win_ , the defending-your-honor game is ongoing. Mostly so I can keep winning indefinitely.”

            Keith isn’t buying it, “You don’t defend my honor that much.”

            “I do so!”

            Something thuds inton the overturned table they’re currently sheltering behind. They can feel it vibrate agains their backs.

            “Lance,” Keith looks at him very seriously, “I don’t think high school reunions are supposed to turn into foodfights. Even yours.”

            “I’m a trend-setter,” Lance preens, but has to duck back behind the table-top with a yelp when a low-flying clump of…something nearly ends up decorating his hair.

            “You’re a something.”

            “Stick with me, darling, and you’ll never be bored again.”

            Keith’s face spasms, “Never call me that again.”

            “But it was so funny when that woman kept saying it over and over and over again and your face got all srunched up – hey, babe, come back, airbourne mousse does not dry-clean out!”

…

**Sweetheart**

            Keith doesn’t have many nightmares, but sometimes he’ll jerk awake in the middle of the night, jump out of bed like he’s got places to go or things to run away from. He’d hoped it would stop when he and Lance started sharing a bed more permanently, but no such luck. Admittedly, it happens less when there’s a warm body beside him, a physical presence to ward off whatever it was that grabs him and bodily flings him out of his dreams and into a reality not ready to receive him.

            But whatever it is that shakes Keith out of his sleep doesn’t stop just because there’s someone sleeping beside him.

            It’s worse when Lance isn’t there, like something in him can’t quite adjust to the absence.

            Lance was out late, helping Pidge and Hunk collect Matt after one of his many misadventures. Keith had to be at the theatre, so he’d kept an eye on their progress through Lance’s running text-commentary and Pidge’s sporadic testy updates. By the time Keith is home he’s dead on his feet and there’s no sign of Lance. He crashes into the bed, asleep the minute his eyes close until…

            He’s dreaming, and he never knows what’s in these dreams, they used to have more substance, used to be more like real nightmares instead of whatever nebulous negativity he’s stuck with now. There’s nothing but vague impressions, the shapes of thoughts and feelings pressing in on all sides and he’s on his feet and his eyes are snapping open and…he’s in his room. And there’s a voice blending with the rasp of his own ragged breaths in his ear.

            “Keith, sweetheart, baby, are you there?”

            And it’s just a string of sounds, syllables rubbing against each other, uncomfortably close, but he’s coming back to himself, registering things like the floor cold beneath his feet and the darkness of the room and the dim green glow of his stick-on ceiling stars.

            “Hey, sweetheart, can I touch you?”

            Oh, there’s Lance. Keith nods mutely. His heart is still rattling his ribcage, uncomfortably loud and close, running beneath the surface of his skin, too fast, too near.

            “Hey,” and Lance is running soothing hands up and down his arms, “You’re okay, you’re okay.”

            And Keith nods along because of course he’s okay. It’s just a dream. He knows that. But it’s nice to hear someone say it so he leans in and lets someone hold him.

…

**Honey**

            “Peaches.”

            “I’m not doing this with you.”

            “Gumdrop.”

            “Lance.”

            “Pookie.”

            “Lance, no.”

            “Tangerine.”

            Keith blinks and stares at him. “What the fuck?”

            Lance shrugs, “If ‘peaches’ is a term of endearment then why not ‘tangerine’?”

            Keith opens his mouth to protest this leap of logic; then closes it again. He has nothing.

            Lance, grinning, triumphant, flops down on the picnic blanket beside him, making the food on Keith’s paper plate bounce with the motion.

            “What’s with the annoying pet names?” Keith frowns in the general direction of their street where the annual neighborhood picnic is in full swing.

            Lance rolls his eyes and makes an annoyed whale noise, “The new neighbors are awful.”

            Keith frowns, and picks at his hotdog, “Hunk seems to like them.”

            “They’re too nice,” Lance says decisively, stealing a handful of potato chips off Keith’s plate as if to emphasize this very important point.

            Keith side-eyes his husband, “Lance.”

            “What?”

            “You don’t have to compete with these people.”

            Lance begins to scoff and Keith cuts him off, “Because they’ve already won.”

            Lance squaks indignantly, “What?!”

            “Lance, I love you,” Keith takes hold of his shoulders and gives him a little shake, “But. We. Are. Jerks. It’s what makes us unique and interesting and keeps the annoying people who ask for favors away.” He pauses, reconsidering. “Okay, so it keeps the annoying people asking for favors down to friends and family we actually care about. Please, dear god, do not get into a niceness arms race. Because we will lose. And then you will be sad and then I’ll have to punch the nice people who made you sad because according to Shiro I have ‘a lot of unresolved issues’.”

            Lance pouts at him, but only a little. “It should be more disturbing that you’re willing to fight some random people for me, shouldn’t it?”

            “I wouldn’t actually fight them,” Keith huffs, “but I would threaten to and let you talk me out of it.”

            “Aww, that’s even better.”

            They sit together for a moment and watch the more sociable people mingle.

            “But can I at least use just as many obnoxious pet names on you as they use on each other while they’re around?”

            Keith narrows his eyes. This feels like a trap. “Tentatively yes.”

            Lance instantly brightens and presses an emphatic kiss to his cheek “Thanks, honey!”

            Keith is going to regret this.

…

**Baby**

            It’s barely December – actually it’s the last day of Novemeber and Lance is already singing Christmas carols. It’s like a disease. Keith never should have let him tag along to the mall earlier today. Lance is weak to seasonal sales and holiday music – both of which malls have in large supply.

            Lance is also decorating their living room with more tinsel than can possibly be good for the cats’ health. Ruby and Laz are trailing after him, Laz dressed in her festive sweater, Ruby jumping at Lance’s legs, trying to climb up him and get at the sparkly fluff.

            Keith is watching this all from the couch, where he’s been press-ganged into untangling multicolored lights. There are worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon.

            Lance is singing both parts of ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ and dancing along to the music as he scoots around the living room, pinning tinsel out of the reach of curious paws. Keith hasn’t gotten very far with the string of lights, instead focusing all his attention on Lance, on the curve of the little smile creeping up along the corners of his mouth, the twist and shimmy of his frame as he skips through the bastardized shuffle-step he’s improvising.

            _Baby, it’s cold outside._

            Lance ends with a spin and a flourish, dropping into Keith’s lap, displacing the lights and throwing the remaining tinsel around Keith’s neck like a feather boa. Keith wraps his arms around his husband’s waist automatically.

            “Baby, it’s cold outside,” Lance says conversationally as the song peters out.

            “You don’t need to convince me, I live here,” Keith says dryly.

            “Hey, you remember right before I moved in…”

            “Yes.”

            “You have no idea what I was going to say.”

            “You were going to remind me of all the times you pretended it was too cold for you to walk three feet to your own house.”

            “Hey, there was no pretending,” Lance places an affronted hand over his heart, “The risk of frostbite was very real.”

            “Suuure,” Keith leans back slowly, pulling Lance down until they’re mostly reclined on the couch, Lance mostly on top of him, “Sure it was.”

            “Definitely.”

            “Definitely.”

            The lights don’t get untangled that night.

…

**Precious**

            They’re at their absolute worst when they fight. Because Lance speaks without thinking and a lifetime of conditioning has taught Keith how to turn defensive at the drop of a hat and they know too much and hurting each other is too damn easy.

            “Well sorry _precious,_ we can’t all turn our emotions on and off at will! Some of us are human beings!”

            “Oh and being hypersensitive has solved so many problems for so many people!”

            They’re at their worst when they fight because after the intial hits have been struck they don’t know where to go but away, away, away. And so they leave, stalk off and refuse to speak to each other.

            They’re at their worst when they fight.

…

**Blue**

            _“Lance…okay, so I got the answering machine…which means you’re ignoring my calls…great. Listen. I’m…I’m sorry. I don’t…I don’t know how to do this sometimes. I didn’t really have any good examples growning up…of how to relate to people, how to be good to them. And I know that’ s a shit excuse and it’s not an excuse at all but…goddammit, I’m trying but I keep fucking up and I don’t know how not to? I love you – ”_

Lance opens the front door and there’s Keith, sitting on the front step, hunched up defensively in his t-shirt and jeans. He forgot his jacket; his hair is wind-ruffled. He looks like a duckling that got serparated from its mother. Or a kitten or something. A small, fluffy creature that thinks it’s a lot meaner and and tougher than it actually is.

            Lance clears his throat; “You could talk to me instead of my answering machine.”

            Keith looks at him with big sad eyes and Lance feels so very tired. He wants the day to be over, he wants to skip to the end he knows they’re heading for, where everything is okay again, all is forgiven and they’ve been through all the feelings and are just curled up together sleeping off the day’s emotional rollercoaster. He thinks it’s kind of funny – he has all the intense feelings right up front when they fight and by the end of it he’s all emptied out and ready to be reasonable while Keith goes cold and closed-off the minute there’s any kind of conflict and it isn’t until the force of the fight’s cracked his shell that all his feelings are allowed free.

            They’re oddly balanced like that.

            Lance comes down to sit next to his husband, tucking Keith’s head against his shoulder. “You’re not…bad at people. You don’t keep fucking up. We’re just people. And people don’t always get along. Sometimes people misunderstand stuff and feelings get hurt. It’s not the end of the world.”

            “When did you get so emotionally mature?” Keith asks dryly.

            “I’m sorry for what I said back there,” Lance says in lieu of an answer, “That was shitty of me.”

            “Yeah, well, I said some pretty bad stuff too.”

            Lance sighs, “I don’t like this kind of fight.”

            “Hmm?”

            “I don’t like the ones with real feelings.”

            “You’d prefer we were bickering over whether or not ‘dark white’ is a color?”

            “It’s grey, babe; it’s grey or beige. There is no such thing as dark white.”

            Keith hums, “That’s what you think.”

            Lance pinches him, “Hey, we were having a touching reconciliation.”

            “I love you, Blue. I’ll never leave you. But sometimes we piss each other off.”

            “And we just have to be a little mad for a while.”

            “Yeah.”

            Lance pauses, rewinds the conversation in his brain, “What did you call me?”

            Keith shrugs, not moving from where he’s leaned up against Lance’s side, “Blue. At least 50% of your wardrobe is blue. It’s your favorite color. It’s what you named your _cat_ after. You’re blue.”

            “Excuse you, Laz is named after a semi-precious stone.”

            Keith makes a dismissive sound, “A blue one.”

            “Yeah, yeah, a blue one, Mr. Technical.”   

            They sit together a while longer before Keith says, “You know I’ll never leave, right? Like, until you get sick of me and kick me out forever, I’ll always come back.”

            Lance wraps his arm even more tightly around his husband, “So what I’m hearing is that forever still means forever. Good. I was worried about that. Dictionaries are slippery devils.”

            Keith laughs and elbows him and then they’re laughing together, the tension broken.

            Lance presses a firm kiss to his forehead, “Forever’s forever. You’re never gonna be rid of me. I’m keeping you, I’ve got a nice paper from City Hall that says I can do that. It’s called a marriage certificate, I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”

            And then they’re giggling like children all over again, tangled together on the front step in weather not quite warm enough for what they’re wearing.

            And everything is okay again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title from 'Just Wanna be Mad' by Terri Clark, which is a hilariously Klance song.


End file.
